Like Me
by MakoMori
Summary: He was the first person who ever made Sherlock Holmes wish he could be a different sort of man.


_Bored. Get me out of here.__  
><em>_ -SH_

_ Where are you?_

_ The Yard. Lestrade is angry at me. He won't shut up.__  
><em>_ -SH_

_ What did you do?_

_ ...Nothing.__  
><em>_ -SH_

_ I may have made Donovan cry.__  
><em>_ -SH_

A snort of disbelief. "What?"

Sherlock was perched in his chair, fresh from the late night cab, fingers trained along the length of the violin strings. They whined under the graze of his fingernails. "She was being particularly cruel," Sherlock explained, his voice dropping for the tiny cry of an E flat. "I snapped at her." His brow furrowed, then his fingers jumped to the A string. "I had no idea she was so sensitive."

"Sherlock, that's-" John's eyes closed, choosing his words carefully as he shifted onto his other foot. "What did you say to her?"

"I told her," the detective tucked his violin beneath the turn of his jaw and rested his cheek against it. "That she is a horrible witch-" (the bow screeched against the strings; John caught a glimpse of a nicotine patch on the turn of Sherlock's wrist as it rose high enough to lower the cuff of his shirt) "-and the reason that her boyfriend broke up with her is because she can't stand to be in an honest relationship."

Sherlock raised his head, but did not meet John's eyes. "What about her and Anderson?"

"Exactly. She'd been sleeping with him the whole time. Apparently he didn't know she was seeing someone. She screamed something incomprehensible and ran out of the room crying. Lestrade is very angry." The violin was laid to rest against the armrest, bow still caught in Sherlock's fingers as he weaved through each white hair.

"You shouldn't have snapped at her like that." John stated, voice quieting as he sank down onto the opposite armchair.

"She deserved it," he replied flatly, eyes focused on nothing.

"How was she being cruel?"

"She was acting just like the kids in primary school." Sherlock responded, his voice even and eyes still unfocused on a spot above John's head. His eyes fell suddenly, and locked on to an unreadable expression on John's face. "What?"

John looked up and locked eyes with the dark-haired man, his expression washed over with one of mild confusion. "You had that look on your face again."

"It was nothing, Sherlock."

"You know I can't actually read minds." His statement was lost in one of John's stock responses, drowned out by the distance put between them when John retreated to the kitchen. The silence between them erupted with the _click_of the gas stove as John lowered the kettle onto it. As John returned to the living area, a shower of documents welcomed him and landed at his feet.

"What was that all about?" John asked, nudging one of the documents with his toe. Without tearing his eyes from the current paper in his grasp, Sherlock gestured to an article beneath the coffee table: _COPYCAT MURDERER KILLS AGAIN._

"Could be interesting. I haven't decided yet." The Detective's fingers flexed and the paper in his hands fell victim to his crushing. The makeshift projectile whizzed by John's ear and landed with a soft thud on the tile floor behind him. "The problem is I haven't been able to examine the body. Donovan interrupted me."

"Perhaps when she's not at the office." The other offered. Sherlock looked up from the space between his joined fingertips as if a thought had just occurred to him.

"Yes. She does sleep." His voice lowered to a growl.

"You should sleep." Watson commented. The corner of Sherlock's lips twitched into a half-smile.

"Sleeping is boring."

"Dreaming isn't." The doctor offered with a sigh of defeat. A single hum filled the air - an A sharp - as the violin fell prey to Sherlock's bow again. "You don't seem to enjoy your dreams, John. Would you stay up constantly if it kept you from having them?"

"I have learned to live with them," he lied, and every line on his face might as well have read 'liar', because Sherlock could pick up on it even without looking up at his companion.

"John," the word caught the addressee off guard but did not keep him from returning to the kitchen. "If I were to ask you about your dreams would that be... not good?"

"A bit not good. But they're about the war... if you must know," he attached the last four words with a reluctance, eyes focused on his own distorted reflection in the silver of the tea kettle.

"Memories..." he heard Sherlock's voice over the hiss of boiling water. Again, his finger pads adjoined, pressed against his lips in thought. He caught the sound of Sherlock shifting on the couch, then his feet against the carpet, heels digging into discarded documents. "I need to see that body. I also misplaced my jar of fingers, Lestrade has been acting odd lately, I don't think he's been sleeping. And Mycroft won't stop texting me."

"Sorry- Jar of fingers?"

"In vinegar." A pause. "Don't look at me like that. This is not the strangest experiment I've done." He didn't even wait for another stock phrase, the cuff of his collared shirt slipped down to his elbow to reveal two nicotine patches and a wristwatch. A grin played at his lips. "We can safely go to Bart's now."

Just as the A-sharp of the kettle filled the apartment with its screams (god knows Sherlock played a note akin to it to keep Mycroft from entering their flat), John had his coat thrust into his arms. Before he could properly get his coat on, Sherlock was already hailing a taxi. Panicked, Watson descended the stairs after him, but only halfway down did his ears - no longer deafened by his panic - pick up the sound of the kettle still screaming a floor above. After returning to shut off the stove, he galloped out to the curb just in time to slide in before the cabby lost his patience and drove off sans Watson and with the door still open.

And before John had a chance to even out his breathing, London's night lights and Sanyo's blazing red logo still dancing in eyes too used to the muted tint of their flat, the taxi halted at its destination.

Sherlock was quick to exit, leaving his poor doctor in his wake to pay the taxi fare. John caught up at the morgue shortly before Sherlock entered it, the door thrown open and the smell of disinfectant and decay hit them like a wave. The hairs on the back of their necks stood on end - for entirely different purposes each - the inside of the morgue colder than John would have deemed comfortable, and Sherlock's hands twitching with anticipation.

Surely he had paid Molly no mind, who greeted him upon Sherlock's arrival, but went noticed only by John. The smile she'd prepared for Sherlock went wasted on the other man, and had turned too fake when the taller man finally addressed her. "Hello, Molly. I need the latest Thumbprint Killer's victim. His body arrived this morning."

"Oh, um." Notepad held tightly to her chest, she paced hurriedly over to one of many in the corner of the room. Face glowing with excitement, Sherlock took her place at the head as his long fingers lifted the zipper of the body bag and revealed what was just above the corpse's torso. Even from across the room John could spot the unmistakable gunshot wound in the man's forehead. "And I'll need to see the other one," Sherlock commanded aside to Molly while his eyes fixated on the wound through his magnifying glass. Molly half-eagerly revealed the body of a woman to Sherlock's left, and was promptly upstaged by the Detective's presence. He barely shifted his gaze upon Molly's departure from and John's arrival to his side.

"They were both shot," John observed, a hint of incredulity in his tone.

"Perfectly sound observation John, I was hoping you would go deeper," the detective spoke, voice distant as if in deep thought. "_Hm, there appears to be bit of plastic in the entry point._"

As if on cue, John was inches from the ashen corpse for a closer inspection. "Where were the bodies found?"

"They were in their apartment posed on the bed, as if asleep." Molly piped up, "They were shot, but Lestrade didn't bring any bullets in along with the evidence-"

"Of course there wouldn't be any bullets. It was never revealed to the public that he took them." Sherlock interjected, irritation in his voice. "This isn't the work of a copycat killer." The detective quickly pocketed his magnifying glass and his hands to follow, pacing between the bodies with two sets of eyes watching him in anticipation. "He's back, but why here, why now?"

"Sorry- back? You mean to say that it isn't a copycat but the original killer?" Watson questioned.

Sherlock stopped pacing to address his colleague. "Two years ago, he killed six people in London and Cardiff. After the sixth, the murders stopped; it was as if he'd vanished, gone from the Earth. 'Cured', Lestrade joked- idiot that he is. No, something stopped him. And now something has made him start up again. Someone has found that... that button, that urge, and pressed it, nudged him in the right direction, and now he's killing again." Mid-sentence, Sherlock's hands lifted from his pockets and moved to drag over his eyes, cheeks, and jaw.

"He was never caught."

"It is not a matter of him, John, but who triggered that desire to kill again; who awoke the beast." But his face did not match his own questions - Sherlock was asking John, but it was all over Sherlock's face that he _knew,_and his eyes had gone grim and dark.

"You don't think-"

"Oh, I very well do think, John. It's exactly the mind that He likes." Sherlock turned away and his attention to the male corpse. "There's nothing more here. The victims don't matter to him. The signature is just the same. I need to see the crime scene." Turning back to face his colleague, Sherlock intended to finish his first thought. "Moriarty must have found it. The little push it takes to get him started again."

"He didn't disappear, Sherlock. He was bound to come back."

"Yes, he was. And this time I will catch him, and when I do, I will kill him."

A darkness of a different brand crossed into John's eyes at the words, and at the sight of it, Sherlock's face softened, yet his eyes kept the dangerous sheen as if they were speaking those words endlessly on repeat: _I'll kill him._There was more defiance in John's face upon looking away than when the two were locking eyes. Sherlock set his jaw forward, clicking his teeth together anxiously, and he, too, cast his eyes down to the floor to banish the look lingering in his eyes from settling on John's again. He did not want a repeat performance of the look he'd received, and instead deemed his cadaver investigation over and promptly left the morgue without even a hum or a nod in wake of Molly's tiny 'farewell.'

Molly swallowed, returning to the morgue with a clipboard held tightly to her chest, only to find Sherlock's colleague still standing between the unzipped corpses. "John, were you looking to investigate them more? Sherlock just left."

She jumped slightly when John suddenly looked up to see her standing in the doorway. "Oh, yes-" he waved it off with a rub to each eye as if he hadn't noticed the fact. "I, erm, have a good evening, Molly." He offered the girl a smile as kind as it was forced and made headway to rejoin his companion.

Although he supposed he had already called a taxi, and impatient as he was as well as the cabbies on late night Victoria Street, John would do well to call his own taxi and return to the flat; however, upon exiting the Yard he noticed a man suspiciously familiar to Holmes trudging down Caxton Street and distinctly taxi-less. After impatiently pressing the crosswalk signal button multiple times, John half-jogged after the detective. By the time John reached Caxton Street, he was close enough to confirm that the figure was, indeed, that of Sherlock Holmes.

The detective stopped just short of Buckingham Gate knowing full well that John was in his wake and intended to catch up. Finally doing so, John seated himself at a bench only a few meters from where Holmes stood with his fingers searching the large pockets of his coat. Before John could open his mouth, Sherlock filled the silence for them. "I've upset you."

"Sorry?" Watson asked.

"You were upset when we left." He was careful to keep his eyes focused on the pavement, his voice distance as if he was occupied with more than whatever he was fishing for in his pocket. "Why?"

"You don't have to be the one to kill him."

"Is that because you think I have some sort of innocence to protect," he finally dared to look up, wetting his lips nervously before directly meeting John's eyes. "Or because you think I won't stop?"

"Don't... don't become like me."

Any trace of darkness left in Sherlock's eyes instantly flushed out in shock. Hands springing from pockets, Sherlock grasped the doctor's shoulders with a reassuring pressure to his grip. "John, what- ...no, you are the most moral person I know." Even with the slight nudge to his hold, John put little effort toward raising his eyes. "John-" but the doctor kept his eyes cast downward.

"I killed innocent people, Sherlock."

Sherlock pursed his lips, refrained from saying _but Moriarty is_not_innocent-_"It was - is - a war. You are a good man."

"I wasn't good enough."

"John," Holmes stiffened slightly, a breathy laugh escaping into the air in a wisp of fog. Without thinking (_without thinking_as much_as he usually did_), and wanting John to see that the darkness in his eyes had dissipated, now filled with concern, he curled his finger beneath the doctor's chin and beckoned him eye-level. "Don't ever think that."

He played John like his violin, in the moments when his thought process flowed and the bow - his fingers - produced symphonies. John's breath had stopped, even while their mouths only touched at a plane smaller than the width of a human hair, but he could taste Sherlock's breath on his tongue - a taste neither sweet nor bitter, almost tasteless, but with a hint of something he couldn't yet detect. And Sherlock waited, waited for John to raise eyes that had fallen closed on account of his actions. He remained, frozen as the oncoming winter, lips barely touching John's and just waiting, experimenting, calculating equations that didn't seem to fit together, and numbers and figures that flew away in wisps of air when John's breath feathered over him.

He pulled back, closing his own eyes, and taking notice that the widened proximity had brought the figures back to his mind. The detective pondered, watching his colleague from the corner of his eye and taking notice how little John moved. The thread of silence, fragile as the bowstrings on Sherlock's bow, fell victim to the sharp cut of Sherlock's words. "You look exhausted."

Watson nodded slowly, rising at the same pace, and then walking down the path with Sherlock suppressing the pace he wished to move at to stay beside him.

But Holmes was impatient.

He had a new body and crime scene he wanted to investigate.


End file.
